The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE WEDNESDAY, FEBRAURY 26. HOUSES FOR WORKERS.

Taihape Daily Times, 26 February 1919, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

WEDNESDAY, FEBRAURY 26. HOUSES FOR WORKERS.

(With which is Incorporated The fal* hape Peat tod Watemnio Nowffl).

The; urgent need tor housing accoommodation for railway employees the editor of the “Railway Review’ to approach the Secretary of the Labour Department with a vie\y to ascertaining if some modification ?f tiro Workers’ Dwellings regulations, could not be made applicable do railwayman, and in this interview ho extracted a fairly full resume, such as we have not seen published, of the provisions of the law respecting this vitally important qeestion. Nowhere in the whole Dominion, not even in the most congested cities, is the housing problem pressing so heavily, proportionately, than -in Taihape—married workers simply cannot come to Taihape to live. Essential industries cannot keep their employees, and in no business lor trade. is this condition peculiar. > In our own office we have to practice a system of cruelty in remaining silent about the impossibility of getting a house when engaging men .We cannot keep the most essential expert in the newspaper husiness—athe linotype ■expert—because we cannot secure for him a house to live in. We are constantly advertising for such men, and this is beginning to scare linotype mechanics from touching Taihape; they look askance at the town and at our office, not knowing which to attribute,, the perpetual advertisements for men. The coming and going of linotype operators is nothing short of a procession. We were fortunate enough to get a single man who remained with us about two years, but lastly he got the marriage idea and left, saying it was no use getting married in Taihape. In the six weeks since he left we had two other men, both saying married men with families could not afford to keep two homes. What is happening in this connection in our own office is being repeated in every other trade in the town. The Railway Department cannot send married men to Taihape, the men will not come, and who is to blame for ..the housing conditions that force people out under the canopy of heaven unless they are prepared to pack into houses like pigs into a sty? Private owners of capital canhot be compelled to erect houses, and every other form and class of investment is so much more profitable that they will not. Then, there should he an appeal to the local governing authority, in Taihape’s case the Borough Council, and if that fails the Government should be approached. Houses there must he, and houses there will be, if those most deeply interested will go determinedly to work about getting them. The housing problem here is a scandal that neither local nor general government seem to recognise their responsibilities in. Private enterprise will not build and the general Government will not imi port iron and other material that would enable the erection of a reasonably priced house for fear of interfering with private enterprise, and 1 so it is people have to go without houses or pay what their other requirements should prohibit them from paying. But there is another sfde to the question, a way out of the difficulty for, at least, some workers. It is not generally known or understood that workers may have houses erected by the payment of ten pounds. ! This is a guarantee deposit of good faith which must in all cases he made.; When an application for a house to be erected is sent in to tho secretary of the Labour Department it must be accompanied by a deposit of one pound, and when the'applicaion is granted a further nine pounds

has to be paid. The worker for whom fehe house is built has to pay 7 per cent, on the cost of the building for 25$ years and then the property has become his own. This extension of the Lo'aus to Workers Act offers splendnd facilities for men to secure a home for themselves. If half-a-dozen bona fide workers were to look out for a suitable piece of land in Taihape large enough for six houses, and obtainable at a reasonable price, then send in their applications for houses with their deposits of one pound each and the situation and description of the land, an inspection would be made, and if the business aspect was right, the houses would be built. All the applicants have to pay for land and building is the ten pounds deposit and the seven per cent, on the cost for 251 years. During the war the abnormally high cost of building has caused a lull in the operations of the Houses for Workers branch of the Labour Department; profiteering reached such outrageous limits that it put food, clothing and houses quite out of reach of all but the bettor paid class of labour; but the Secretary of the Labour Department has told the "Railway Review’' that everything is ’’in readiness for resumption of house-building campaigns, and that they will be put in operation just so soon as prices permit houses to be erected for a sum that workers can afford to pay. In the meantime the extreme seriousness of the housing problem is rapidly increasing in intensity. There ib something criminally wrong when it is admitted by the Government that wages paid to a worker are not suffi ejent to provide for his needs and a roof over the heads of his family. Government rushed to the aid of huge capitalists and trading concerns with unlimited money to build stores for wool, meat and such like; but the people must wait for houses in which to live until the fiends of capitalism feel disposed to (lessen their pesky profiteering. We hope workers will note that' while the Government will use the tax-paying power of the country to assist wealth to house wool and meat, it must waft the profiteers’ time before it can think of housing mankind. The law provides all the machinery for any bona fide working man being housed; but the profiteer has for the time being rendered that machinery useless. It had been cleaned up and overhauled, but its wheels cannot be freed from the profiteering by which they are clogged and encumbered, and the houseless workers must remain houseless, awaiting the profit robbers’ pleasure. We are of opinion that the Government house-building machinery should be given a practical test by half-a-dozen or more Taihape workers who would be glad to have a home from which they were not liable to be evicted. Those men might discover a land owner who would sell- them an acre and a 'half of nailable ’’and at a reasonable price, then all they need do is to send along their proposal to the Secretary of the Labour Department in detail, stating clearly land situation and the number of rooms in each house. Undoubtedly, the Government Labour Department, if it will exercise its powers, is able to purchase building materials in large quantities at a much lower rate than private individuals can purchase them, and it may be found possible for the Department-’ to co'mmence its post-war house-building for workers in this town, where the household difficulty presses so very hard on a large number of workers, and renders the conduct of some industries almost impracticable.